


Epilogue: Sunbird

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Series: The Winged Jedi [27]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Coming of Age, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Female Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Old Age, Old Married Couple, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-08-19 11:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20208982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: The sun that rises over Makenna is golden, but she still thinks about her father as she watches her siblings grow.





	Epilogue: Sunbird

Cody was fourteen years old the first time he held his daughter in his arms. Briikase is seven the first time she encounters death. 

They've gone to a strange planet coated in thick green vegetation so dense she can't open her wings. She looks amongst the many similar faces, though she doesn't know these men. They're her father's brothers, just like the other man in yellow and blue. The Vode. These men are Vode too. 

"Atalla, what's happening?"

Her father picks her up because he's very strong, even as grey creeps onto his hair. "One of my brothers had died, Brii."

"Oh." She looks at her mother, standing with a stoic blue-skinned woman who feels at once desperate and hopeless. "Does Atalka know?"

"Yes, myetse." He pets her hair, kissing her face. 

They go to where the man, a Vod, is being buried. A Vod she knows as Bly hugs the blue woman and is held tightly in return. 

Atalka kneels at the dead man's head and leads the Vode, kneeling around him, in a Mando'a prayer. Then they bury him, marking his place with a small stone that simply reads _Aspen._

She's back two years later for Bly, and at last she understands. 

The desolate sobs of Aayla Secura haunt her dreams for months. 

* * *

The first time she flies, Cody is there to catch her when she fails the landing. 

She's high on the low oxygen, the adrenaline and the overwhelming pride in her father's face. She laughs herself to tears in his arms and he lets her. Her mother lands nearby and strokes her hair, but she's always been her father's darling. Her mother's serene smile and puffed wings are enough to indicate her pride. 

"My little Sunbird." Cody coos and butts his forehead against hers, then kissing her nose. 

After that, she takes every chance she has to fly. The move to Makenna and her vast mountain ranges only spread her love of the air. 

Obi-Wan teaches her aerial dances and how to carry another person without hurting them. She teaches how to hunt and prey on animals with respect to the natural order. 

It is Cody who teaches her to land, by catching her over and over as she comes down and fails. He tends her scraped knees and elbows, kissing each wound sweetly. He encourages her to take to the air, but he's always there when she comes down. The day she finally makes it, he paints one of her white shirts with the armour paint to match his and for months, it's the only shirt she'll wear. 

The number of her own siblings continue to pile up. As she grows, more and more come. They each have a Vod they adore and who adores them. 

She sees her parents in love and she wonders how they got that way. She wonders why her mother continues to have children, even when there are so many and plenty of Vode. When she asks as much, her mother gets sad. 

"One unfortunate day, my darling, you'll understand." She says in response and touches her swelling belly. 

* * *

She's much older when Anakin and Padmé come to visit. She remembers them vaguely from her childhood, but they weren't touching nor did they kiss. 

They have two children with them now, both school age, that run around and play fight. The girl is bossy and somewhat loud. The boy is quieter, but by no means sweeter. 

"They're Anakin's kids." Padmé jokes, but it's also an explanation for their spoiled behaviour. 

Regina trades glances with her and rolls her eyes. Their younger siblings try to include the twins in their manner of play, but it's gentle in comparison, and they quickly find they don't like each other. She steps in and puts the Skywalker kids in line. 

They bother them by yanking out feathers from any raptor that passes them. One or two could be forgivable, but each time another child passes with a different jewel tone to their wings, they tear out another. One of the youngest bursts into tears when they pull out some of her down. She's so small, and the down so new, that she can't even reach where the feathers were taken from to soothe the tender flesh and it makes her more hysterical. Regina, herself a stunning and deep-set sapphire that matched the blue of the 501st, collects their sister and soothes her, gently preening her until she dropped to sniffles. 

Luke and Leia watched her for a while, but didn't intervene or even apologize. 

"If you pull any more feathers, you don't get to play with anybody." She announces, looming over them. "For the rest of your stay, you won't even get to talk to us."

"Why?" Leia barks. 

"Because you hurt us when you pull feathers. And some feathers," She gestures to her own flights, "don't grow back. Ever."

She scowls, enough to frighten the brats. They diligently look down, intimidated. 

"You are going to go apologize to Eunoia. Right now. Then, you're going to apologize to everyone who's feathers you've pulled."

The twins slink off to do as she said. Poor Eunoia hides behind Regina during their entire apology and remains there until after they left. 

"C'mon, myetse, let's so see Atalka."

"No," Eunoia runs over to her anyway, "wanna see Kix."

She chuckles. "Okay." She picks up the little girl, then turns to Regina. "Enforce my punishment."

Regina salutes, only a hint sarcastically (likely learned from Rex) and takes off into the air. 

She takes the exhausted toddler over to Kix. He immediately opens his arms to receive her and she cuddles right into him, falling asleep properly in the crook of his arm.

"Pulled feathers, huh?" He asks, finding the sizable gap in her down. 

"Luke and Leia."

Kix nods, getting Jesse to pass him an ointment he made. He rubs it onto the red and sluggishly bleeding skin. Eunoia sighs gently in bliss and presses her face further into his chest. "I'll take care of her."

"Thanks."

She seeks out and finds her mother, late in pregnancy, letting Mangata and Aesthete preen her as Cody chats with Rex. 

She lays down on her father's lap and is gratified that he just starts playing with her hair. 

* * *

She's twenty-three, just after Orenda is born, when she wakes up to Regina's uncontrolled sobbing. She jumps from her bed, throwing on the first robe to hand and rushes out to her sister. 

For the twenty-one years that Regina has been alive, Rex has gotten up early and the two have gone off to spend an hour together away from home. Rex's age had never slowed him, nor has she ever considered it. Their mother was ageless and graceful. 

She threw open the door to the small finished cave where the 501st men bunked. All of them were awake and standing, parting their small circle to let her in. 

Regina was sitting on Rex's bed, holding him tightly. He was unresponsive and not breathing. 

"You can't leave me!" Regina cried, her voice breaking on a sob. A fresh wave of tears came and many of the Vode looked away uncomfortably. 

Fives takes a deep breath. "I've got this. Go tell the General."

The other men file out, and Echo takes her hand, leading her away too. 

Obi-Wan is waiting outside with Cody, who has Orenda cradled against his hip. 

She notices for the first time the age that shows on her father. His wrinkles are deepening and almost no pure black remains in his hair - it's all sprinkled in grey and white. He doesn't seem any less vital and energetic than usual, but then again, neither had Rex. 

She understand abruptly what her mother had been warning her about. Death. 

They all sit out front of the cave until the sun rose. The 501st get consoled by their brothers and no one mentions it when the 501st men hold the children they've taken as their own a little tighter. 

Regina emerges some hours past dawn, dressed in a full set of Rex's armour, complete with his skirt and pauldron. Her face is streaked with salt lines from old tears. She's carrying Rex's body. 

"Looks just like him, huh?" Fives says softly when he comes to stand next to Echo. 

"Yeah." Echo breathes. 

Regina's platinum blonde hair is pulled into a severe bun behind her head, her sapphire wings light up under the risen sun. 

Obi-Wan takes the body from her and flies to the top of the mountain, where the snow breaks to form a plateau large enough to accommodate them all. Vode bring up wood. 

Makenna has no rich soils to bury him in, so instead they cremate him and bring the ashes down to the cave at the very bottom of the mountain that contains an access to the underground watertable. 

"May you join to these gems and become even more beautiful." Obi-Wan says as she slowly empties the small jar of ashes into the river. 

She finds her mother in the evening, sitting with Regina at the peak of the mountain. The final point of the mountain is only a few feet above the small ledge they sit on, but the snow doesn't rest on the flat face. At the top, in her mother's neat handwriting, words have been chipped out and inlaid with gold. 

_May They Never Be Forgotten_

Underneath, written in a similar fashion;

_Captain Rex, 501st Legion, CT-7567_

And just like that, he's gone. 

* * *

With each year passed, the 501st dies off. 

It never gets easier to see the names added to Obi-Wan's list. 

For some, the children they adore barely recall them. Orenda recalls Jesse only by Force signature, even as she inherited his armour and a single written letter - all that remained of him, in her hands. 

She regrets that these children will never know these men, but she knows the other Vode will pass on their memory, their stories and ensure they are not lost. The men of the 501st may be gone, but the 212th is not. 

* * *

She begins to realize her optimism in the face of the gentle disappearance of the 501st is misplaced. 

Cody tells her what it means to be Vode. He tells her about the enhanced age, and that each man has fifty years or less in him. He tells her that he's the oldest in the 212th, and how old he was when she was born. 

It strikes fear into her heart and she redoubled her efforts to spend time with him, even as her mother continues to have children. 

* * *

"Why do you keep doing this?" She demands of her mother one day. 

Obi-Wan holds her now-protruding belly. "Getting pregnant?"

"I understand it's easy for us, that it's painless, if uncomfortable, but this can't just be a passtime for you or something."

The elder raptor cups her belly a touch more protectively. "Cody doesn't have much time left. I want as much of him as I can."

She deflates. Obi-Wan loves Cody more than she loves herself, second only to the love she has for her children. If Obi-Wan could only have one person to live her life out with, it would be him. "Why don't you ever age?"

The redhead looks down, shining like fire in the glow of the setting sun. "We live very long lives, Briikase."

"How long?"

Obi-Wan doesn't answer and she gets nervous. 

"_How long?_"

"Two thousand years." Obi-Wan breathes. 

"Two . . ." She can't even finish her thought as the weight of that number sinks in. 

"I don't have him for long." Her mother says, but she can feel the unsettling ripples of despair. "I need to make the most of it. To love him as fully as I can."

She never mentions the pregnancies again.

* * *

Cody manages to give Obi-Wan twenty-one children in all: thirteen girls and eight boys. They range in looks and colouring, with Briikase and Regina looking the most Vod-like of them all. They're almost identical to Cody and Rex. 

Cody calls her to him one day. 

"Here." He says, pushing a stand toward her. She backs away. 

"No, I can't."

"Brii," He says gently, reaching out to stroke her cheek, "you're my first baby. I love you with all my heart."

"Atalla . . ."

"I want you to carry on for me when I'm gone." He pushes the armour stand closer. "I don't wear it anymore. Not to mention I've always wanted to see you in it."

She swallows thickly and hesitates. 

He helps her put it on, showing her all the latches and buckles as well as the quirks of armour so lived-in. When they're done, she stands before a mirror with him at her side. 

"You look good, soldier." He jokes, but the armour fits her well, not even to mention the matching gold of her wings. His voice is soft as he takes her hand, his hair whiter than the plastoid of the breastplate. "You look just like me."

She doesn't return to wearing robes.

* * *

Cody dies when the youngest is only three years old. 

She wakes up mid-scream, heart racing in her chest and the Force roaring in her ears. She pushes past Regina and Ani, who try to help her, and bolts over to the private room of her parents. She enters and finds her mother also awake, holding Cody to her bare chest. Her wings are wrapped around him, but very still. She's tracing a tattoo he has, holding one of his hands with her free one. 

She drops to her knees, startling Regina who was right behind her. Obi-Wan doesn't look up from where she sits, her hair shrouding her grief, even though it's thick in the air like smoke. 

"Oh." Is all Regina can muster. 

* * *

Obi-Wan isn't the same after Cody died. 

Each year, more and more Vode die. It takes less than ten until they are gone completely. 

She catches Alata, the youngest, as she lands from her first flight and reflects on the tragedy her littlest sister isn't even aware she's a part of. 

Alata barely remembers the Vode. She thinks she just misremembers the siblings who now don that armour. She doesn't really ask about the empty bedrooms, nor the extra weapons and armour left where their owners had laid them. 

Alata doesn't remember the way her mother would smile coming down from a flight. She doesn't know what it means to see the Vode wrestle, train or be a massive family, living together contently. She has no idea how much love was now gone, swept away on the breeze like so much vapour. And she never will. She'll never remember them. 

She thinks about it late at night, in the sky and wearing Cody's armour. The touches the gouges and nicks, the wear of the joints and the snug fit. She reaches for a signature in the Force she knows isn't there and she misses him even worse. 

* * *

Her siblings grow and she takes to filling Cody's role. She gives them all the love and attention he would have and grows concurrently more worried about her mother. 

Obi-Wan goes out every year on a specific date and returns some hours later freshly melancholy. She holds her ribs under her left breast and whispers in Mando'a to the stars. 

Obi-Wan doesn't get less beautiful with age. More, perhaps. Coupled with her Jedi serenity and gentle demeanor, she becomes more angelic as the decades flash by. 

The final hurt comes when Anakin Skywalker dies. 

"He was right." She muttered to herself, dabbing away tears that just wouldn't go away. "This is dreadful."

"What is?" She asked softly. 

"Living amongst those you'll always lose."

"Everybody dies sometime, Atalka."

Obi-Wan's heart breaks across her face and she feels bad. She hadn't intended to hurt her mother. "I know, myetse."

Anakin's wife dies ten years later, but it feels like heartbeats. 

* * *

Obi-Wan withdraws from the world and just watches it spin. 

She wonders why she doesn't try more. Obi-Wan is a full Jedi - a Knight, a Master, a Councillor and a High Jedi General. She could return and help everyone. But she doesn't. 

"I have given enough of myself to the world, I think." Obi-Wan replies when asked. "I don't have much left to give."

She knows what her mother means is _It died with Cody_. 

She wonders if she would be able to see the ashes of the Vode in the crystals. 

* * *

She understands why the Stewjoni don't leave their planet and its ranges. All of the life beyond the bubble of a raptor's home is fleeting and all the more tragic for it. There's no known species that lives even half the life of a raptor.

"I understand what you meant." She says one day. Regina and Ani are out making more mortal friends, intent on revelling in the present rather than being sad about what as lost. 

"I'm sorry." Obi-Wan replies, taking her hand. 

She squeezes her mother's hand. "You don't want to be here, do you?"

"Pardon?"

She pokes her ribs, where the tattoo she gets redone every year is. "You want to join him."

Obi-Wan looks down. "Yes, I do."

"It's alright, Atalka." She takes a deep breath. "Tell him that I love him when you see him."

"I will." Obi-Wan promises. "Fly well, fly high and fly far, Sunbird."

Briikase is just shy of a thousand years old when she wakes to her senses telling her that her mother was gone.

* * *

They're all gathered around as she empties the ash jar into the river on Makenna. 

Most of her siblings have children and she's gratified that they have named some of the young ones after Vode. Even Atala has a human lover, a man descended from the Skywalker line. They all left the mountain, but they've all returned. 

"You told her she was okay to go find him, didn't you?" Regina asks softly. She'd had three lovers, graced with twins from each one

"I did."

"Maybe it's time you stopped shouldering the burden of the dead and live for yourself, huh?" Regina bumps her shoulder, their plating grinding together. 

"Maybe." She agrees, but doesn't really mean it. 

* * *

Her mercenary work brings her to Mandalore and Concord Dawn often. This contract, however, involves the Duchess personally, and upon its completion, that was who she was to report to. 

"Your Ladyship." She bows. "The bounty hunters after you are dead."

"Thank you. I am glad I placed my faith in you." The Duchess rose. She was a beautiful woman, with sharp blue eyes and elegantly pinned blonde hair. 

"However I may be of service."

"It's a little more than that, isn't it?" The Duchess teased.

"Perhaps." She eyes the Duchess, taking in the more revealing clothes and suggestive smirk. 

"Can you make more room in your schedule for me?"

She wants to say no, to protect herself, but her mother's weakness or Mandalorians shines through. "I'm sure I can make some, Satalia."

This is going to end badly. She's going to ache and hurt and suffer, because this will never last as long as she wants it to. She'll never have had enough. But then . . . 

_Fly well, fly high and fly far, Sunbird._

She adjusted Cody's armour. 

Falling is just as essential as flying, and it would be nice to have someone on the ground to catch her again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Atalla - Dad (Stewjoni)  
Atalka - Mom (Stewjoni)  
Myetse - sweet one (Stewjoni)


End file.
